Friday, 19 June 2015

With a bit of inspiration from Stephen Lockyer, we've set off on a new venture. After reading this post by him, we wanted to find a website, Pinterest board or similar that had photographs with grammar errors on that could be used with Key Stage Two children. The reason we wanted a website with 'friendly' images on was so that it could be a go-to place either while planning or if something came up in a lesson. Everything there could be trusted to be classroom material. A web image search is often great, but can involve a lot of scrolling and sometimes things that shouldn't be shown in a classroom.

Because we often find it difficult to switch off from 'teacher mode', while out-and-about, we sometimes spot that companies have made errors on their signs (or intentionally made broken grammar rules as part of their branding). We have started to take photos of these and store them on Dropbox so that we (and others) can make use of them.

After discussing the errors or branding, a company or person could be written to by a class or pupil to explain what's wrong. And, as the photo was taken by the teacher, we're able to explain its location and context. It may even be in a location familiar to the children.Our images can be found here. Please feel free to use them.

Saturday, 6 June 2015

We've written many posts about apps. Mostly, lists of apps we've come across, but also some of the possible uses for them. Yesterday, Liam presented in London about the use of iPad devices in the classroom. As part of that presentation, he gave his top twenty apps that he uses to support learning in his classroom.

Of course this list is open to discussion, it doesn't explain uses for them and there's an app for just about everything (or at least it feels that way). If you'd like to take a look at the slides used in the presentation, they can be found here.